birds of the air make nests on me
by someofusare
Summary: AU where everyone's a hunter and no one is a demon or an angel. One-shot Megstiel. "Cas is nowhere close to home. He picks a direction and drives."


_they busted my mouth for to get at my tongue_  
_to see just how this had all begun_  
_so I opened my mouth like a dragon's breath_  
_I only spoke truth, but it only brought death_

the man who would speak true, blitzen trapper

.

.

.

* * *

_i. fed me words that i could not taste_

* * *

_Lucifer_, that's the word like poison on everyone's mouth these days. _Luci got in with a bad crowd_, Michael tells them all, Anna listening, rapt with attention, from the dining room table._ Lucifer left us_.

The walls are peeling wood paneling and their chairs are fold-out. Home.

Castiel sits on the floor with his hands in his lap, head hung low.

"Is he coming back?" Gabriel asks, because that's what Gabe does, really. Says what needs saying, even if -

_even if_

Michael's eyes flash, and for a moment he looks dangerous, he looks sharp and burning, a loaded gun.

"No," he says, and that's the end. Discussion over, everyone as you were.

Gabe leaves in the morning, but they were all mostly expecting that.

/

"Are you happy here?"

Anna's hands are too rough for someone so soft, her skin shining white and translucent in the moonlight. The air is hot and dry, burning his skin every time he tries to move. Anna left years ago, went east to make her fortune. Her hair is grimy though, the red color dulled.

_Are you happy here?_

Castiel shakes his head.

/

The girl in the alley by the bar is screaming. He runs through, holding his beer bottle by the neck like in the goddamn movies because he can't think of anything better to do.

Something has a woman in its arms, and it definitely isn't human. The thing screams like a banshee when it spots him, its teeth long, sharp knives. One moment the thing is screaming, and the next someone has a knife in its neck.

There's a girl crying on the ground that needs attending to, so Castiel handles that while the other man drags the corpse of the thing away.

"What the hell was that?"

"A crocotta," he says, panting. "Help me with this body, would you, pal?"

/

Dean's the one who gives him his new name.

"Castiel Milton?" he says, turning the words out like they must be the ugliest collection of syllables in the English language. "What the fuck kinda name is _Castiel_ _Milton_?"

"It's an angel," Castiel tries to explain, because there's a cross burning red-hot on his skin and Dean's the most godless person he's ever met, but the other man waves him off, downs the rest of his drink so fast it has to hurt. Dean does that sometimes. Makes things hurt when they don't need to.

"Yeah, yeah, alright, man," he mutters, "I'm calling you Cas, okay?"

_and god said, "let there be light," and there was light_

And so it goes.

/

Lucifer got in with a bad crowd, leather jacket on his shoulders and a mirror in his hands. Sores like burn marks covering his jaw, his knuckles always ripped to shreds.

Cas gets in with a bad crowd, leather jacket on his shoulders and a shotgun in his hands. _Hunters run_, Dean tells him, loading the barrel of a gun as empty as the bottles on the floor. _Sam runs, Dad runs, I run_.

Cas runs now, too.

/

_salt the bones and burn the son of a bitch_

* * *

_ii. silver stars pinned on every one_

* * *

Sam nearly punches the girl in the face, which is what catches his attention.

"Meg," Dean growls, dropping into a fighting stance even as he shoves Sam away.

"Deano," she replies, her voice like molasses, like water, like silk. Cas couldn't name it. "Long time, no see."

"You left us for dead, you bitch."

"Oh, did I?" She wears shame on her face like cheap makeup. "Well, I'm back, boys. Miss me?"

She grins, her smile as wide as a million dirt roads, a million dirt roads in the backwoods of this godforsaken place. America, Cas thinks sometimes, like those old Simon and Garfunkel albums Dad used to play back before -

_they've all gone to look for america_

and they have, haven't they?

/

"Baby," she purrs, and it's night, and the lights of the bar shine on her dark, wavy hair. She looks for a second like she could be something beautiful. "What's your name?"

He clears his throat. "Castiel." She quirks her brow, and he amends his statement. "It's an angel. You can call me Cas."

She smiles, her teeth gleaming. She's always doing that. Smiling. "No," she says, "I like the angel. Like Clarence, or something."

"Clarence?"

"Oh, Castiel, you and I are gonna have a lot of fun."

/

Her eyes are black when she picks at the cross around his neck. "You're far from home, aren't you, angel?"

"Yes," he says seriously. "I suppose you could say that."

"Christian?"

He tilts his head. "Catholic."

"I believe in God," she says, dropping the necklace back to his chest. "I just don't think he's a very nice guy, is all."

He doesn't mention the rosary in Meg's back pocket. Just like he doesn't mention the Bible in Dean's suitcase, or the holy water in Sam's backpack.

_'necessities,' dean told him once, when he was stealing books from the church, palming bottles of holy water in his dirt-laden hand_

Cas doesn't mention any of this. He doesn't say anything at all.

Meg brings the bottle to her mouth by its throat.

/

She drinks, because -

_Daddy issues?_ the boys always think. "That's the first guess," she tells them, smirking.

Next is abusive _boyfriend/husband/girlfriend?_ the last always whispered like a dirty little secret, with a smile like a knife on the boy's mouth. Maybe she's depressed, maybe she's crazy, maybe she's a goddamn alcoholic.

Maybe there's nothing better to do.

_dingdingding, we have a winner_

/

"If you do that to me again," Dean says, "I'm gonna fucking kill you."

"I'd like to see you try, hot shot."

"Shut the fuck up, Meg." Sam glares at her, as if willing her silence.

"Hey," Cas finds himself saying, "don't talk to her like that."

Dean shifts his attention to him. His eyes are black and filled with anger, and Cas thinks if ever men could live on hate it would be the Winchesters. "Not you too."

Cas realizes suddenly how out of place they all look. In the year he's known Dean and Sam, he's never once thought about how monstrous they must be to normal people, their teeth like shattered glass, their hands rougher than sandpaper.

_'lucifer fell into a bad crowd,' gabe said the last time any of them saw him, 'i think he died somewhere in arizona'_

He turns around and walks away from them all.

* * *

_iii. ain't no crops but the ones you've sown_

* * *

He's got a shotgun in the trunk and a roadmap in his hand, the lines on the paper looking something like veins. There's a girl sleeping in the passenger seat.

Cas is nowhere close to home.

He picks a direction and drives.

/

They find the nest somewhere in Montana.

"I thought these motherfuckers were extinct," Meg shouts over the chaos. She has a machete in her hand and blood in her eyes.

Cas grimaces, looking back at the barn. Flames lick at the air from the broken windows, monsters in the skin of humans writhing, desperate, on the unholy ground. "Apparently not."

/

"Why'd you ditch the Brothers Grimm?" She downs her drink like she's looking for the answers at the bottom of her glass. "Why did you come with me?"

Cas slouches against the dashboard, his hand curling around the edges of the fading map. He can feel the leather jacket weighing him down, and he shrugs it off before he turns to her. It's night here, but then, it's almost always night.

_i'm empty and aching and i don't know why_

"Because I wanted to."

/

Their first night together she grips his back so hard by the nails she draws blood, curved lines arching like wings along his spine.

"Do you think I'm ugly?" she asks him, the moon shining through the dingy windows like some kind of supplication. Her skin is ivory in the light, elephant tusks or lost teeth. Like empty spaces in a thousand different motel rooms that were all sort of the same to begin with.

There's a girl on the bed with eyes as black as fading bruises, given freely by her devout and loving father.

_hallowed by thy -_

"No," he says, his eyes wide. For the first time in a long time, he knows exactly what to say. Her hand is small in his, and she smiles, her mouth soft. "My caretaker, all that thorny pain. You're beautiful."

/

Dean runs and Sam runs and Dad runs and Father ran and Daddy never loved me like he should. They vanish, one by one, marching all in time.

/

"Are you ready?" she asks him, her hands on the barrel of the gun, her back against the wall. He nods, glancing back at the fragment of a soul crawling on the floorboards.

There's a girl next to him with eyes like two cigarette burns and blood on her hands.

"Yeah," he says, letting the beads of his rosary dig into his palm.

The cross doesn't burn Cas anymore. It's cool against his skin.


End file.
